Hi all,
greetings from Caracas, Venezuela.
I am a 33 year old IT Professional, owning an IT Business downtown Caracas. Our services are include the basic stuff, like business tech support, data recovery, etc. We also do Web Design and Software Development and we proud ourselves of being on of very few Linux specialists and promoters of Open Source in the country.
Linux has always had a high value here and Venezuela even has its own Linux version (Canaima Linux). This is supported by bad economy and high dollar prices, for proprietary software and OS's such as Windows or Mac.
I myself also work as a Freelancer, mainly as book author for IT books, but also doing Linux Consulting and Promotion, Translations (English, German Spanish) and professional Content Writing (with and without SEO) for websites, blogs, etc.
My time with Linux is just about 2 years, so it is not that long, but I have spent extensive time to learn and understand it (and it still do), reading any book, article and post I can find and trying to apply it for myself. Ever since, I have been actively promoting the OS and even in business, we are working more (and preferably with Linux these days). This said, I am not using (or touching) a Microsoft Machine for these two years, except if it is a client computer
and I do not regret it.
I usually tend to promote openSUSE for Business- and Home Users while going with Fedora as home alternative and RHEL (or SEL) for professional business solutions.
During my time with Linux, I have been working with a lot of Distros, starting with Knoppix in 2010, as backup and recovery system, then going to Debian, Mint and Kubuntu, before working with ArchLinux (which was fun!) and finally openSUSE Leap 42.1 last year. My Debian Experience was average, Kubuntu has been a pain. I started with 15.10, just to find some tray icons missing, the digital clock being bugged, etc. Hence I followed recommendations to go to 14.04 LTS. It worked great (even KDE), but it was old and I did not like its design. Hence I went to openSUSE. When 16.04 came out, I installed it on one machine, to check it out. While clock and tray icons were fixed, a lot of crashes were not and other issues arose. Needless to say, that 16.10 I did not even try. I also had some time using Xubuntu and Mint to try it out. Xubuntu I did not like because I simply can't get along with XFCE and Mint... well being an IT professional, I found it too simple and lacking some (for me) important features such as root access, etc. I tried also Linux Mind Debian, but since I did never make any big love for Debian, it didn't feel right either.
Ever since I found openSUSE, I gotta admit, that I am addicted to it. I love that distro, I love our community and I love to dedicate time and work, to support the project. This is probably also the reason, why I have dedicated my second book entirely to openSUSE and I suppose that from that point onwards, no other Distro, no matter how good it possibly would be, could match with openSUSE (at least in my opinion).
When it comes to DE's, I am a big fan of KDE, though ongoing issues, bugs and crashes and due to its resource hungriness (as well as for my work as Linux writer and specialist) I have started to try out GNOME 2 more and more. While it appears minimalistic at times, compared to KDE, I do really start liking it. Now - there is just the issue with some KDE Software I really, such as KDE Connect and Krunner (which I use a lot), which makes me hesitate to switch completely.
Other than that, I know well (and love) LXDE, MATE and Cinnamon. I do also know (but don't really like) XFCE and Unity.
When it comes to Windows, I gotta admit, that I do not like it (like most Linux users) but I also do not hate it. I had my issues with it, but I have been using MS since DOS 6.0 and I had some good times with it. I just see Linux as more powerful, more modern and as a bigger opportunity, because it allows me to do way more things, it is smarter in handling things, easier to use (once you get used to it) and it offers a lot of free stuff. Being Software Developer, I find it appealing, to be just a click away from IDEs such eclipse or a command away from tools such as git. I also loved DOS though, I suppose I am somewhat a command-line friend... :P
Well that should be all.... Quite a long story... that was not intended. Anyway, I am looking forward to be here. I have been using LQ on several occasions, to look things up, but I never registered until today. Which I did, because I noticed it is a great source and something that (besides the openSUSE Forums) could benefit from my help (as I have benefited from LQ before).
See you here, have a good time and a happy new year (just missing a couple days now...)
Any questions or whatsoever, feel free to let me know.
Cheers,
Ben
